Experimental Research On The Effect Of Situated Learning On Oral English Proficiency Of Junior Middle School Students

On account of the importance of oral English and the necessity of the oralteaching reform in junior middle school, this study experimented on the effect ofsituated learning approach on the improvement of oral English proficiency, withconstructivism as its theoretical basis. The specific research questions were:1) Issituated learning able to improve oral English proficiency of junior middle schoolstudents?2) Will situated learning influence junior middle school students’ attitudetowards oral English learning?Eighty four (84) students from two classes (Class five, the experimental classand Class eight, the control class) of Tianrong middle school were experimented on.After a pre-test for group neutralization and problem identification, the treatment ofsituated learning was used for14weeks in the experimental class in comparison tothe conventional teaching in the control class. Two stages were adopted for situatedlearning training classes; one focused on the text book while the other extendedbeyond the textbook. In each stage, there were three steps for oral training. The firststep was to help the students grasp the basic points of teaching tasks, e.g. intonation,rhythm, and voice. The second step was based on the oral language points toorganize the situational dialogues, aiming to train their ability for makingappropriate dialogues and the last step was based on their cognition, with studentsexpressing themselves on what they learned from the first two steps. A post-test wasthen carried out in the two classes to check the effectiveness of the two differentteaching methods. A questionnaire survey, together with classroom assessment wasconducted in the experimental class to investigate their attitude towards oral Englishlearning. By collecting all the data from pre-test and post-test and evaluating theclassroom assessment and the questionnaires, t-test was adopted for data analysis.Statistical analyses were performed with SPSS13.0software.Situated learning improved the oral proficiency of junior middle school studentsand positively influenced students’ attitude towards oral English learning. The experimental class scored significantly higher, with a mean score of12.6comparedto10.8in the control class. Over90percent of the students in the experimental classshowed greater attitude in oral English learning. Based on the results and discussion,pedagogical implications and suggestions for further study were concluded asfollows:1) The results yielded in this study may provide teachers with confirmedbelief in the situated learning to improve learners’ oral English proficiency.2)Teachers should be good at creating diverse forms of situations to help students haveactive attitude towards oral English teaching3) The present study was a small-scaleexperiment which was conducted only in one junior middle school; scaling-up is aquestion that is worthy of note.